You'd think we'd give more thought to the ingredients that go into a product we soak fabrics in before wrapping them around our entire bodies. Instead, we favor familiar brands and low pricetags over safety and environmental concerns.

Now let's say you don't want to spend so many dollars on your detergent, nor do you want to put harmful chemicals into the very products you lay so close to your naked skin, nor do you want to search high and far on the Internet and specialty, overpriced markets every time you need a new bottle of detergent. How about making your own?

Here's a very simple laundry detergent recipe safe for any graywater, septic, or sewage system. All of us downstreamers say thank you!

Basic Biodegradable Laundry Detergent
4 cups of water
1 bar of vegetable-based soap (avoid any soap with heavy fragrances)
2 cups of washing soda (available in most supermarkets)
2 cups of Borax (available in most supermarkets)
A big wooden spoon
A measuring cup
A grater

Method:
Pour 4 cups of water into a pot and heat. The water does not need to boil.
Grate the soap bar.
Remove hot water from heat, add grated soap, and stir with wooden spoon until soap is completely dissolved and you have some highly soapy water.
Pour in Borax and washing soda and stir.

When the solution is liquid, you may choose to add 1/4 cup liquid bluing to make whites brighter without the use of bleach. You may even add in some liquid castile soap for a little extra cleaning boost and scent. Add enough hot water to make 4 gallons to 5 gallons laundry detergent.

Store the solution into a 5-gallon container with a lid or use your old laundry detergent bottles. Let the solution sit overnight and in the morning stir again. For each load of laundry, use about a 1/2 cup of your homemade laundry detergent.

Nicole Caldwell is a self-taught environmentalist, green-living savant and
sustainability educator with more than a decade of professional writing
experience. She is also the co-founder of Better Farm and president of
betterArts. Nicole’s work has been featured in Mother Earth News, Reader’s
Digest, Time Out New York, and many other publications. Her first book,
Better: The Everyday Art of Sustainable Living, is due out this July
through New Society Publishers.

Better Farm

Coming home to roost.

Monday mornings with Finnegan. ❤️

Queen.

Kobayashi Maru, patron saint of Better Farm, maxing in a patch of tall grass on a perfectly sunny day.

GREAT day for a ride!

So inspiring to be part of this evening’s Health and Wellness Fair at LaFargeville Central School, where students are on the cutting edge of sustainable practices with on-site vertical gardens, Brita Hydration Stations in the hallways, dual-flush toilets in the bathrooms, solar panels and wind turbines providing power, and rubber-rolled roofing reflecting sunlight off the building. And that’s just the beginning! These folks have earned their Silver LEED certification and it was a pleasure to make art and plant garlic with so many exceptional humans. 🙌🏼

Sunday brunchin’

Mighty productive Saturday morning as we raze an old shed and rescue a 19th-century stone wall from Better Farm’s original barn. Stay tuned...

Each year, we commit to adding at least 100 trees on Better Farm’s property, with 2018 marking our 800th tree going into the ground. We’re celebrating with 50 white spruces, a dozen or so fruit trees, several hardwoods, flowering beauties like peony trees and hydrangeas, and a slew of willows. The baby spruces arrived today and are taking a soak before being tucked into their new homes.

Repost from @habituallyhaley — Sunday funday hangs in the yoga trapeze at @betterfarm

Big thanks to SUNY ESF’s Society for Ecological Restoration group for helping to install this living wall in one of the bathrooms at Better Farm. Bathrooms, with all their steam and moisture, are perfect places for living wall installations featuring vines, spider plants and succulents.

Students from SUNY-ESF’s Society for Ecological Restoration have officially infiltrated Better Farm for a weekend of unwinding, team building, family meals, seed starting and a little heavy lifting.

Happy Easter!

Origami farm.

Aquaponic fish hard at work. The fish we raise in our aquaponics system are cast aways from fairs, given to us by folks who no longer want them, or are minnows left over from fishermen’s lake excursions. Every spring, we release several of the biggest fish into a pond on the property so they can enjoy a cushy retirement with tons of space and adventures. Our way of saying thanks for them helping us grow tasty greens all year long. 🐟